


May Not Be In Your Best Interest (Part III)

by drea_rev



Series: May Not Be In Your Best Interests [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 08:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7884736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drea_rev/pseuds/drea_rev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Continuation of my AU where Eric Bittle doesn't take thing as well as he does in canon<br/>First part:http://archiveofourown.org/works/7750279 2nd part: http://archiveofourown.org/works/7762639<br/>Sorry it took so long!</p><p>Warning for mentions of depression, suicidal thoughts, other mental health stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	May Not Be In Your Best Interest (Part III)

Part Three

 

 

Bittle has several emails in his drafts folder at this point. One of them, he keeps telling himself, will give him the perfect feeling of having overcome his doubts about this decision that might impact his future for most of the next decade. Or rather, telling his father and mother about that decision. A degree is four years. A transfer stretches that out into the unknown. And they already have a child, he thinks ruefully, who orbits different planets than they ever will.

When he's not losing sleep over the credit classes he's taking, poring over culinary education opportunities with April and March at Annie's over steaming cups of caffeine, he's losing yet more sleep pushing around paragraphs and fixing typos. One moment, a phrase will seem really capable of winning over a football coach with a firm belief in postsecondary education. The next, he'll throw it out, because it 'sounded gay' when he read it out loud.

 _Maybe Jack's right_ , Bittle thinks. _I didn't use to feel like this._

Bittle noodles around on his computer, on youtube, looking at his messages and comments left on his video on how to use a springform pan, after making the decision to stand up. But stand up he finally does, then turn, the screen having burned a green patina in the center of his vision even in a fairly lit bedroom, and then he walks with heavy legs to his door and opens it. He steps into the empty hallway, hears Shitty's podcasts faintly behind some oak doors and furniture, Chowder and Dex playing cards on the couch downstairs. But the loudest thing right now is the noise he knows knocking on the hefty wood in front of him will make.

He raises his hand before he can talk himself out of it and aims for the meaty middle of the door. His first impulse is to knock quietly, especially since Jack famously goes to bed early, but maybe he wouldn't mind being yelled at for waking the former draft prospect up. Or maybe he'll mind it, but a little bit later.

_Dunk._

_Dunk._

As Bittle is about to make the third and final knock, a startling noise comes from inside—an aggressive shuffling, a heavy thud, and then the bird-call-like creak of the open door and Jack's pale eyes are suddenly inches from his.

Bittle recoils, wondering what to say, actually wondering why he hasn't thought of what to say beforehand, but the next sound he hears is the neat scrape of the door closing behind Jack.

But Jack is still in the corridor with him.

Bittle actually doesn't know if he says anything to Jack for the rest of the night. It's a blur of purplish black sky, campus buildings lit creepily by streetlamps and the occasional blue glowing police call box on a lawn or between the library and student center, and Jack leading the way in front of him, the light spreading square and hounds-tooth patterns across the back of the thermal shirt he sleeps in. And after that it becomes a blur of an office with three other people in it, not looking at each other, and then finally someone with a clipboard leads him over a threshold into a room.

“Nice to meet you, Eric. My name is Sandy.”

 

 

 

Sandra Denmat shrugs off the title of Doctor, bestowed upon her by Bittle, because he's never done this before and only seen images of it in newspaper cartoons. Later he will debate the cruelty, in his mind, of 'shrink jokes', making comedy out of those courageous enough to seek mental healing.

“None of that, Eric. I'm a clinical social worker.”

“I guess...I didn't know it was so easy. Do all colleges have twenty-four hour counselor access, ma'am?”

“Maybe,” Sandra smiled at him, her lipstick reminding him of his mother. “But then Samwell isn't like other colleges, is it?”

A soft silence falls between them. Bittle clears his throat. “I guess I’ve been thinking about quitting...hocke--” He straightens up. “I shouldn’t be here. People probably come to you with—all that stuff on the questionnaire...suicidal thoughts—I shouldn’t be here.”

“They do,” says Sandra with a tilt of her head and a smile. “And even those with such issues say the same thing you just did.”

“That they want to quit hockey?” Bittle blinks.

“That they don’t think their problem is bad enough to be here. Trust me, Eric, mental health, and health to begin with, is a different animal for everyone. Depending on the season, student-athletes come around quite regularly. You’re not alone.”

 

 

Boston University slammed him backward as he was skating up the center with a puck to pass to Jack. He hit the ice with his back and the rink’s ceiling blinded him.

“It’s about how I see myself.”

UMass Lowell sent him sprawling into the net. He’d been cornered in the backdoor and flashbacks of the hit had made him scramble backward as if he’d forgotten to skate.

“I feel competent until something goes wrong, you know?

Boston College stick-checked him until he dropped his.

“And then all the progress I made before that moment--” Bittle cupped his hands together out in front of him, as if clutching an orange, then separated them. “It all disappears.”

Jack grabbed his shoulder as he dashed toward the showers, but Bittle ripped away.

“And every single time, I hear it.”

“What do you hear?” Sandra inclines her head.

“I hear Jack. I hear him telling me...to get with the program. Or quit. He said it to me when I was new, and I wish I--”

Bittle threw his laptop on his bed and ripped off his Samwell pennants from the wall.

“--I wish I could.” He sits up straighter, tears in his eyes. “I wish I could. Get with the program. Be tough. Just push back or—or whatever you’re supposed to do. I know I don’t try hard enough to get over that. I know he wants me to. I know I’m in the wrong sport--”

Jack stood in the doorway and Bittle had yelled at him.

“And I know he and I are always going to be--”

Sandra interrupts him. “If I may, Eric, there’s something you said earlier. You know you don’t try hard enough? How do you know that?”

Bittle took a long breath. Closed his eyes.

He saw Jack in front of him in the faceoff circle as he tried to out-edge a taller North Dakota winger with his left shoulder and he saw the puck drop between the two men ahead. He saw the furious slapping of sticks and the disk ricochet to the Fighting Hawks lineman--

The winger sent Bittle flying into the boards with an absent, light shove. He somehow did a barrel roll and lost his stick. He heard hands slamming the glass above him, voices muffled by the padding in his askew helmet, and tried to push himself off the dirty ice.

But he didn’t need to, because his forearm had been grasped and dragged up, and then he saw Jack again in front of him, but closer.

“Tell me about that time you broke someone’s trust,” Jack had muttered, before skating across the rink to where he should have been the moment the puck had left his tape.


End file.
